Recovering playwright, once won a STRANGER Genius Award for theater. Now writing about drinking and jobs I've worked, when not drinking or working.

06/15/2011

This is Why I am Shutting Up

I kicked off 2011 here at Just Wrought with an essay called “Demons’ Year Off” in which I promised to reduce my ranting and “listen more than talk going forward”. In a more recent piece, “Joining Averroës’ Search” I renewed my commitment to keeping quiet so that others, ideally smarter, more informed and better positioned to effect change might join the discussion. (Admittedly, this is a bit of a quixotic gambit, given how mum most of Seattle’s artistic administrators have kept during this crisis.) Today, with his post over at the Seattlest “Open Letter to the Intiman Board”, Jim Jewell has reaffirmed my faith in the ability of smart arts professionals in this town to lead the way out of this crisis, and maybe even show the nation how it is done.

“… For all of the difficulties facing Intiman, you have also been presented a unique opportunity. While every other theatre in town, and really in the country, tries to figure out how to make difficult transitions, shifting the earned/contributed income balance and trying to break from the failing subscription model, you have a blank slate…. This is not the time to try to fix a broken model, but to take the pieces you have and build something new. It isn’t enough to be stewards; a steward could easily work in hospice. We need you to be shepherds, to lead, and to be willing to follow, the rich flock of artistic talent in Seattle.”

Jewell goes on to offer suggestions both bold and innovative, but neither impossible nor even all that risky, compared to the very real risk that Intiman’s board will do nothing significant at all.

He rightly points out that the subscription/season model is a tumor that sucks the vitality out of arts institutions across the country, and he offers a sober workable alternative tempered by his experience as the former Marketing and PR Manager at Seattle Children’s Theatre, the founder and de facto leader of the marketing discussion group Holes Not Drills, and as Managing Director of NewsWrights United.

For better or worse, whether in self-congratulation or deprecation, I can’t help but think of myself as Sam Adams in Seattle’s struggle to become a world class theatre town. As folks are happy to point out, I have a knack for starting loud and unruly conversations; but Sam Adams, drunken loud-mouthed Tea Party-thrower that he was, was never well positioned to lead the colonies anywhere except into ever rowdier arguments. In the end, he had to turn the struggle over to his betters and let them lead the cause. If I’m Sam Adams, then Jim Jewell is my cousin John: smarter, better informed, and better positioned to effect the change we need.